New ActionScript 3 Book in Romanian

My friend, Cosmin Varlan, a professor at the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University published a book about ActionScript 3 – web programming with Flash and Flex. It is in Romanian, so I guess for many of you it is not too useful :D. For the others, you can buy it from the bookstores across Romania (it is published at Polirom) and it costs 42 RON (10 Euro). You have 400+ pages to ramp up your ActionScript 3 skills quickly.

Here are some of the topics:

Rich Internet Applications
Processing XML documents
Event Model in Flash and Flash connectivity
Graphics and Multimedia, filters
Creating a puzzle game in ActionScript 3

October 30, 2009 | Filed Under Books | 2 Comments

Article about Flash Catalyst in Dutch Magazine

If you are a designer or you just want to learn how to use Flash Catalyst you may want to check the latest issue of the Dutch Magazine Web Designer. I wrote an article for this issue demonstrating the workflow between Adobe Illustrator, Flash Catalyst, and Flash Builder. Although by the time the article got published, Flash Catalyst Beta 2 was already out (in my article I used Beta 1), I still think it is worth the read especially for someone who’s new to this tool. Almost forgot you have to know Dutch to read the article :D.

October 27, 2009 | Filed Under Flash Catalyst | 2 Comments

Adobe Flash Builder for Force.com Preview

We just launched a developer preview for Flash Builder for Force.com; it allows you to create Flex applications that connect to services and data in the cloud (Force.com platform). You can read more here.

October 26, 2009 | Filed Under Flash Builder | 1 Comment

PayPal Express Checkout with Flex and Adobe AIR

Miti was very busy this summer and if you read his article you can see why. If you want to integrate your Flex application (web or AIR) with PayPal his article on this matter is a must.

In this article, I will show you how to integrate PayPal Express Checkout with either a Flex application running in Flash Player or an Adobe AIR application. Express Checkout streamlines the checkout process for PayPal buyers, but there are security implications for using it in stateful applications.

l will review the security and UI considerations, introduce the architectural approach, and then show you how to implement the whole thing. You can also download working samples to see how everything works together.

October 23, 2009 | Filed Under AIR, Flex | 1 Comment

CoCoMo pricing

This is way too cool to let the news out only on Tom Krcha website! If you are one of those who were excited by CoCoMo but didn’t try for a live project because it was in beta and you didn’t know how much it would cost, now it is the time to try. Without further ado, here are the prices for Adobe LiveCycle Collaboration Service (this is the name of the services known as CoCoMo):

Live Stream Bandwidth ($0.49 per GB)
Push Messages ($0.10 per 1,000 messages) – count messages sent in to LCCS
User Minutes ($0.01 per Hour) – time clients spend connected to LCCS

There will be a free quota available for those who are just testing or don’t use too much ($15US for a month of usage).

Tom promised that he will build an application to gauge how much it actually cost to use this service. Read Tom’s post for more details and some calculations on how much you can use for the free quota option.

October 21, 2009 | Filed Under Others | 1 Comment

Buy CS4 and get Flex Builder 3 for free

If you buy a Creative Suite 4 Web Premium or Master Collection you get Flex Builder 3 Standard for free. This offer started on September 15th and applies on purchases made to Adobe.com as well to those from authorized resellers.

For more details on how to claim your Flex Builder 3 Standard license check this link.

October 21, 2009 | Filed Under Flex Builder | 2 Comments

Thoughts on the mobile world

People say if you want to boil a frog you put it in the pot while the water is still cold. If you throw it in when the water is boiling the frog will jump out. If the water is cold, the frog will stay and by the time the water is too hot it is too late to jump.

Whenever I look at the mobile world I can’t stop wondering why people accept being locked in just to use a device? Although you might think I’m talking about iPhone, actually I’m talking about any situation where you have to give away your freedom of choice in order to access a service or a device.

Let’s put it in another way. Suppose you buy a car, and the dealer tells you “I’m happy you chose our brand sir! You know you’ll be able to use it only on these specific roads and only with gas from these petrol stations“. I bet if this happened to you, you would not buy the damn car.

This is something that would never happen on a free market (such as the automobile’s industry). However, the mobile industry is not a free market. In order to be a carrier you need a license from the government where you want to do business. The number of licenses is controlled, thus the players have much more power than the players in a free market. It is almost a monopolistic position with only “one” provider to satisfy the market.

I think the answer is pretty simple, we arrived at this state one small step at a time because of the way the system is setup and works. We are frogs in the pot and we feel the warm water pleasing rather than threatening. At the same time I think this is not sustainable and I’ll explain why.

If I apply another level of abstraction to this problem, I can move the whole problem and discuss it in terms of capitalism/statism and democracy/communism. History tells us that although in the short term statism can produce miracles, in the long term it always fails. Having one entity controlling how and what should be done is not sustainable and kills creativity. Because if you want to be creative sometimes the only solution is to break the existent barriers and just go wild. But going outside the rules and boundaries is forbidden in these systems.

Coming back to the mobile world I do believe that both carriers and device manufacturers will have to change their behavior if they want to last. And probably they’ll do it because other forces, from outside of their system, will push them to do so.

Probably I’m more sensitive to this matter because I grew up in a communist country, and whenever I see something that restricts my freedom I can’t stop thinking about the history lessons. If you enjoyed this post, you may want to read Miti’s post on Flash and iPhone.

October 16, 2009 | Filed Under Others | 4 Comments

Flex Camp in Iasi

UPDATED with the final details!

After successful Flex events in Bucharest, Craiova, Timisoara, and Cluj it is time to have a great one in Iasi. So, if you want to learn more about the Flash Platform, meet other people from the community, or just get your first taste of Flex come on October 31st to Dublin Pub: str. Vasile Conta nr.30 (Fundatie – Casa Studentilor area). You can register here.

Here is the almost final program of the event:

Interval orar	Prezentare	Speaker	Companie
9:00 – 9:30	Inregistrare participanti
9:30 – 10:15	Keynote	Miti Pricope	Adobe Romania
10:15 – 11:00	Flex 4, Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder and PHP: A delicious combination	Mihai Corlan	Adobe Romania
11:00 – 11:15	Pauza
11:15 – 11:45	Automation Testing with FlexUnit 4	Adrian Aioanei	AyoneSoftware
11:45 – 12:30	‘A’ stands for… Application, Architecture, or Adobe?	Sabin Buraga	Universitatea A. I. Cuza
12:30 – 13:30	Pranz
13:30 – 14:00	Analytics & Media content management solution in Flex	Gabriel Mirea	Digital Distribution Network
14:00 – 14:45	Interoperabilitatea AS3 cu alte tehnologii	Cosmin Varlan	Universitatea A. I. Cuza
14:45 – 15:00	Pauza
15:00 – 15:45	Editarea vizuala in browser si dezvoltare rapida de aplicatii	George Plesu	Kabinet
15:45 – 16:30	Flex 4 SDK: What’s new	Miti Pricope	Adobe Romania

Now, wouldn’t be nice to start a Flex User Group in Iasi too? This would make much easier to create events like this one in the future.

I’ll update this post with the exact time and location soon. See you there!

October 16, 2009 | Filed Under Conferences | Leave a Comment

Wrapping up MAX 2009

I took some time to think about what I saw at MAX 2009 last week. Although I knew what the announcements would be, the way we chose to package them was a surprise for me and, at the same time, the crowd’s reaction was an interesting barometer. Because it is one thing to think that your kid is the smartest one around and another thing to have others telling you the same.

First of all, more of the announcements were Flash Platform related compared to last year’s MAX. And please notice that I used “Flash Platform” and not some more specific terms like Flex, Flash Player, or AIR. I think almost everybody is now comfortable with this term and understands what it means. We first used Flash Platform on a large scale during the June launch of beta previews for Flex 4, Flash Catalyst, and Flash Builder 4. It is a nice surprise that in only three months you have embraced this.

Going back to the the Flash Platform news, I think one of the biggest was the preview of the Flash Player 10.1 for mobile. Today Nokia, Android, Palm, and Blackberry are on board for delivering early next year the first smartphones with full support for Flash Player 10.1, and this makes iPhone the only one without Flash. You’ll have goodies such multi-touch and accelerometer. Of course, we also announced that the next version of Creative Suite will let you develop Flash applications that target iPhone (they are compiled to iPhone native code). Later on this year you should be able to play with this new version.

The Flash team did great work to optimize Flash Player for mobiles. They reduced the memory footprint by 50% and optimized the execution so your battery will not run out of juice when playing Flash content. Furthermore as you might expect for mobiles, when the Flash application is not in the foreground it reduces power consumption even more. I’m sure this is only the beginning and the Flash team will continue to improve and innovate further around mobiles.

To tell you the truth I can’t wait to have devices and play with this technology to build Flash apps. I just have to have a little more patience and to convince my boss to approve a new phone for me. Having one platform to target all kinds of screens and devices is one step closer.

AIR 2.0 brings to the table many of the features you’ve requested in the past year. You’ll have raw access to the microphone. You’ll be able to package your application as a native installer and run commands and system executables from within your application. You’ll be able to open any documents with the system default application for that particular file.

On the same track of improving the performance for devices that don’t have the same power as computers, Intel and Nvidia demoed chips that bring HD playback capabilities (nice and smoothly) using Flash Player to netbook devices.

During the Sneak Peeks there were three cool demos. The first one showed how to swap code during debugging in Flash Builder (you can change the body of a function/method during the debugging and continue to debug, no need for restarting the debug session). Then there was Ely’s demo on a Flex framework for mobile. As a former Flex Builder engineer I am very excited thinking about having these two features available soon. And finally, the Rome demo an AIR application and browser application that can create digital content using animations, drawing tools, and text layout tools. It can even import Photoshop documents and display all the layers set in the original document.

Serge Jespers demoed a cool game built using AIR and how you can distribute and make money using Flash Platform Services. I think this was the missing link of our Flash Platform story. Using these services you’ll be able to distribute and monetize your applications more easily.

Speaking of the missing link, I have to remind you about the Omniture deal. We’ll see some interesting things in the future regarding the integration between Adobe technologies and Omniture services.

And since I mentioned Photoshop, during the same Sneak Peeks there was a cool effect demoed. Basically it is a smart heal brush that can intelligently removes parts from a photos and replace with suitable parts from the rest of image. You can remove persons, ugly buildings that ruin a beautiful landscape, wires, scratches, and so on.

ColdFusion was another product with great exposure and I think it was well deserved it. I know that in Europe ColdFusion is not the number one server-side technology, but if you’ll have a look at it, I’m sure you’ll find places to use it even in the enterprise world. As Miti loves to say it is just an amazing bus services platform, a product that can glue together different pieces from the enterprise world. ColdFusion 9 has an amazing set of features, integrates with Java, BlazeDS, and LiveCycle Data Services, can generate PDF, plays well with the Flex framework and finally has an excellent IDE built on top of Eclipse. Did you know there are more 800,000 ColdFusion developers out there and the trend is up?

While I’m talking about the enterprise, it was cool to see the FedEx application that allows them to see what their trucks are doing in real time and then redeploy the trucks according to the specific needs in time and space. It is built using the Flash Platform. Sometimes I hear people say something that annoys me a lot: “Well Flash is a cool thing, but for the enterprise world is just eye candy”. People who think this better think again. There are simply too many examples of enterprise applications that rely heavily on the Flash Platform in order to offer features, experience, and usability.

Of course there were many more things worth talking about, but these are, for me, the closest to my heart and mind. If you weren’t at MAX, then you can watch it online (http://max.adobe.com/online). Having said this, I can’t wait for the next year’s MAX. The countdown started and time passes in a blink. Are you coming?

PS. Thanks to everyone who took the time to talk with me and share his/her ideas and thoughts, including old friends and new friends.

October 13, 2009 | Filed Under Conferences | Leave a Comment